In a previous post (Musings on Mixing…), I described what I believe to be a fundamental difference between bread baking at the commercial scale and bread baking at the much smaller scale of the home baker. At the commercial scale, spiral and oblique dough mixers are quite efficient at incorporating air into the dough during mixing, making overoxidation of the dough a real concern for the professional baker. For the home baker, however, the opposite concern comes into play. Conventional tabletop stand mixers are relatively inefficient at mixing dough. Therefore, the home baker has to look for ways to increase air incorporation during mixing. I concluded in the previous post that the only way for the home baker to do this effectively was through hand mixing.

Hand mixing, whether it be by a slap and fold technique like the one shown here or by just a series of folds during the first fermentation, can produce a nicely developed dough which yields a loaf having the desired open crumb with many large air cells (alveoli). However, it is a technique not without its own challenges. If performed improperly, hand mixing can lead to a loaf with large alveoli embedded within an otherwise doughy mass. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that there must be an easy way to use a conventional home stand mixer to produce a dough that would rival the quality of a professional, spiral-mixed dough.

Before I delve into the details of the technique I’ve devised, I think it important to understand the process by which the crumb of a bread is established. During dough fermentation, yeast cells produce and excrete alcohol and carbon dioxide as metabolic by-products. The yeast do not release the carbon dioxide as bubbles but instead, carbon dioxide molecules diffuse through the yeast’s cell membrane into the surrounding water. This process continues until the water reaches its saturation point, a point where it can no longer hold any more carbon dioxide. At this point, small air bubbles already present in the dough as a result of the mixing process act as nucleation sites, and begin accepting the dissolved carbon dioxide into their interiors, expanding in the process. As these bubbles grow larger, some begin to cluster and then coalesce, producing a wide distribution of different sized bubbles throughout the dough. It is this matrix of varying-sized bubbles that ultimately sets upon baking to become the crumb.

With this as a backdrop, it became logical to infer that the more small bubbles there were to act as nucleation sites, the greater was the potential for the formation of the wide open crumb structure for which artisan bakers strive. Increasing the small bubble population was attempted using a two-step flour incorporation technique. Using this double flour addition technique, just enough flour is first added to a water and levain slurry to achieve a loose batter consistency. This batter is then mixed using a tabletop stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, until the mixture becomes aerated. Finally, the remainder of the flour is added and the dough is mixed with a regular dough hook (or spiral hook, if your mixer comes equipped with one), just until all the flour is incorporated. After a brief autolyse period, the mixing is completed as usual. This procedure resulted in a soft, smooth and silky dough with a wonderful elasticity/extensibility profile.

Pain au Levain using Double Flour Addition

Final Dough

680 g King Arthur Organic Select Artisan Flour

90 g King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour

455 g Water

15 g Salt

300 g Levain (mature sourdough culture, 100% hydration)

The organic white and whole wheat flours were first combined in a large mixing bowl. The water and levain were then added to the bowl of a stand mixer and were mixed on the lowest speed, using the whisk attachment, just until the levain became evenly dispersed in the water, about 1 minute. Just enough of the flour mixture (~75 g) was then added to produce a loose batter and the mixer speed was then increased to speed 3. Whisking was continued until the mixture became well aerated, about 3 minutes. The whisk attachment was then exchanged for a spiral dough hook and after the remaining flour mixture was added, the dough was mixed at the lowest speed until all the ingredients were incorporated, about 2 minutes. The bowl was then covered with plastic wrap and allowed to rest for an autolyse period of 30 minutes.

After this time, the salt was added and the dough was mixed on speed 3 using the spiral dough hook for 6 minutes. The dough was then placed in a lightly oiled container, covered, and allowed to ferment for two hours. No folding was necessary during this first fermentation.

After the two hour first fermentation, the dough was divided into two, 1 1/2 lb. pieces and each piece was lightly rounded. After resting under a plastic sheet for 15 minutes, the pieces were shaped into boulots, placed in rice flour-coated brotformen, covered with Saran Quick Covers and allowed a second fermentation of 3 hours. After the second fermentation, the boulots were inverted onto a peel, scored, loaded into the oven and then baked at 425°F for 40 minutes with steam applied for the first 15 minutes (scoring and steaming video can be found here). The resulting loaves exhibited the desired distribution of large, medium and small alveoli and a translucent alveolar wall structure.

71 Responses to “More Musings on Mixing…”

I can’t WAIT to try… I just have to wait until my oven is fixed and that will take another 7-10 days. Frustration. Your explanation seems very logical, it’ll be interesting to see it in action and with my flour. You’re a true scientist…. err, baker! Jane

*Interesting* technique! Thanks for posting this.
It reminds me of making pancakes: how important it is to beat the batter well. I’m guessing a similar aeration occurs.
I don’t have a mixer, so I’ll be interested to see if I can get the same results by hand (a little more elbow grease but the theory should be the same, I hope?)
Cheers
FP

Nerd alert…
You have implicitly invoked LaPlace’s law…
P = 2T/r, where:
P=pressure within the bubble
T=wall tension
r=radius
…to explain the development of large gas pockets as smaller bubbles coalesce. That a small bubble would fill a larger one is not intuitively expected, but a simple experiment involving party balloons of different sizes can show that this is exactly what happens. LaPlace’s equation states that, for a given wall tension, as r decreases, P increases. Therefore a small bubble will have a larger pressure and, since pressure drives gas flow, the small bubble will fill the larger one.
My perspective comes from that of the lung, which also contains millions of tiny bubbles (alveoli) that normally do NOT coalesce because the lung has special mechanisms for controlling wall tension as radius changes. In disease, the control of wall tension can be adversely affected and then small alveoli do, in fact, fill larger ones with potentially catastrophic results.
What we (I!) don’t know is what effect the surrounding dough has on wall tension and, therefore, pressure of bubbles of different sizes. The empirical evidence indicates that large bubbles do, in fact, occur in bread dough. It is, therefore, very tempting to assume that bubbles in dough are behaving just like party balloons. Your technique is certainly intriguing, but I have to wonder if the result was due to increased numbers of small bubbles or a subtle difference in the tension of the surrounding dough…or both. Does gluten have the same physical characteristics as the material used in manufacturing balloons or is there something about dough that makes it behave more like the alveoli in a lung? It is interesting that large holes only seem to appear in doughs with specific compositions, e.g., high hydration, high protein doughs. (Your formula appears to be about 66% hydration, fairly sticky.) And what about fat content? Even in the hands of a professional, expert baker, large holes are extremely difficult to generate in whole grain breads. I would have to check for sure, but my recollection is that there is not one photograph in Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain bread book showing a bread with large holes.
Finally, thanks for doing this experiment! By the way, the mixing technique described in the Tasajara Bread Book is strikingly similar to the one described here, but there’s no indication that Ed Brown really thought about the physics.

Steve,
The first time I read your post worrying about over/under oxidation, I thought it had to do with its effect on yeast, bacteria, and possibly gluten development.

But I see now its not about oxygen at all but about the physics of air bubbles, coalescence, etc. My knowledge here regarding bubble creation in dough is mostly from Buehler. I guess you figured out a practical way to create condensing nuclei for the dissolved air and CO2. Interesingly, Buehler spends other pages discussing pinching out excess air pockets and I have always felt both closed, regular crumb and open ones are both good; the trick is in knowing which your in the mood for and knowing how to get them. It seems so much time in artisan bread development is spend getting big irregular holes but butter falling through holes is a mess and sandwhich bread generally does better with small holes. I tried looking at the crumbs of your earlier post of your levain (using a small fraction of rye) and the current one (using a small fraction of whole wheat) and umm… liked the first! I would expect there were many other differences in the two bakes besides ingredients which could account of differences in the two hole structures.

I was wondering if you had any comments about using your DLX to achieve the second approach using just the roller and scraper. Or do you believe it would be wiser to use both the whisk attachment and roller? (One less thing to clean). And since your method is predicated on physcially whipping air into the dough, and since this is best achieved using a batter, do you think hand whisking is practical or would you speculate it would be too much work (I.e., is air incorporation more a function of whisking or of a batter’s ability to absorb air more than a dough?)

Jane, 7-10 days without an oven? Have you started going through bread baker’s withdrawal yet?

FP, depending upon how much stamina your arm muscles have, I would imagine that the technique would work with hand whisking as well. I’d be interested to hear if you see any incremental improvement over a proper hand mixing. I really never had any problems with hand mixing; it was only when I tried to use a stand mixer that I wasn’t able to produce the quality of dough I was seeking. This double flour addition technique was conceived for people who, for whatever reason, could not or would not mix by hand and had to use a stand mixer.

Rick, I take a ‘Nerd Alert’ more as an invitation than a warning!
Thank you for taking the time to explain Laplace’s Law and how it relates to crumb development. When I began writing this post, I had to decide what level of technical detail to include. Since I imagined that most of the readers are non-technical (perhaps I might be wrong), I decided to err on the side of ‘descriptive’ rather than ‘quantitative’. I thank you for providing the physics background for those technical readers who have an interest.
You also bring up an important point that I perhaps did not spend enough time discussing; the elasticity/extensibility profile of the dough will have a big effect on the tension of the bubble walls. Thus both the number of nucleation sites (small bubbles) and the rheological properties of the dough will affect how and to what extent the bubbles coalesce which, in turn, will affect the crumb accordingly. Of course, the real test of the double flour addition technique is to run a side by side comparison between it and a ‘control’ (conventional mixing protocol) using identical ingredients, time, temperatures, etc. I was considering doing this before I published the post but then thought, “Wait a minute… this is a bread blog, not a refereed technical journal”, so I decided to post it as is and let the readers decide its merit (another form of peer review).

Chris, to paraphrase, “Beautiful crumb is in the eye of the beholder.”
As you point out, there are many breads where a dense crumb is desired (pan de mie comes to mind). This method perhaps might not be suitable in those cases. Like any craftsman, the artisan baker needs to understand which of the available tools to use in order to get the desired result.
I think it is important to restate that this technique is not meant as a ‘better’ alternative to hand mixing. The fact that I was able to get an open crumb, using a stand mixer, that looked anything at all like the crumb I obtained through hand mixing was a coup. Prior to using this method, I could not.
I have not tried using the DLX for this technique but I would suspect that the roller and scraper would not sufficiently aerate the dough. Perhaps the whisk attachment would. Regarding hand whisking, if one is willing to hand whisk then I would suggest going all the way and just hand mix.

Hopefully, you are here to think about the chemical structure of the bread. Even if it becomes so technical for my little brain, I’m confident in your results. I will follow you precisely, and let you know if the result matches our expectations !

Hi Sally,
Thanks for visiting and writing. What a wonderful compliment! Perhaps I should change the subtitle of Bread cetera to read: “Trying to make the world a happier place… one human being at a time.”

What an interesting post, Steve! I will try when I get home : one batch as usual (incorporating at low speed, autolyse, short-mix, long fermentation) and one batch following your method. I’ll let you know. Wow! So many new things to try! I love it.

What’s surprising me is that your first rise is just 2 hours long. What’s the temperature of your kitchen (supposing you let your dough to rise in your kitchen, of course)? I generally need to leave my doughs something like 5 hours on the counter, and my kitchen is around 18°C. Is your rising time shorter just because there is more starter in your dough (about 39%) than there’s usually in mines (around 33.5%)? Or because we’re not using the same flours? Or is it “just” your proofing box?

And even more surprising to me, your second rise is LONGER than the first one. Usually, for a first rise that lasts about 5hours, I need to leave my loaves to rise a second time no more than 2, max 3 hours.

I’m frustrated for not having had the time to read your post before because I have a dough on my counter since 10:00AM, it’s 2:24PM, it’s not ready and I’ll have to put it in my fridge and bake it tomorrow, as I won’t be there between 4:15 and 7:00PM. Had I read your post before, I would have followed your recipe this morning and my bread would have been baked in time…

MC, I’m very interested to hear the results of your controlled testing.

Flo, I can think of two possible reasons why my loaves required only a 2 hour first fermentation when yours required 5 hours. Firstly, I maintain a 76ºF (24.4ºC) temperature for the fermentation using my proof box. This is a full 12ºF (6.4ºC) higher than the temperature you are using. As a general rule, a chemical reaction doubles in rate for every 10ºC rise in temperature, so you can see how this might affect fermentation times. Secondly, I have my starter on a constant, twice a day feeding schedule (at 70ºF); it has never seen the refrigerator since it was established. This results in a very vibrant, active starter. As far as the longer second fermentation, this could be due to the fact that I did my preshaping , bench resting and shaping in my kitchen where the temperature is much lower (closer to your kitchen temperature) than my proof box. The dough had significant time to cool and therefore probably resulted in a longer second fermentation.
The timing for making this bread works out well for me. I start mixing on Saturday morning (at 7 AM… I’m a morning person) and have bread ready for lunch.

Thanks a lot Steve for those explanations. I should ask my dear husband to build a proof box for me, he would find that a nice thing to work on and it could help me a lot in my kitchen.

Your answer concerning your starter leads me to another question, because I would like to keep mine out of the fridge too, if only I knew for sure how to : how much starter to you keep from day to day? Do you discard the excess each morning, for example? How much to you feed it (on the ratio 1:3:3 if I remember correctly, or was it 1:2:3?). Steve, I’m sorry but I’m afraid you may have to post on how to maintain a starter alive out of the fridge, to educate people like me who put their starter in the fridge and take it out 1, 2 or 3 times a week…! Well, to be exact, I KNOWhow to keep mine out of the fridge but the I have to discard so much I just won’t do it, it would be ridiculously expensive. So I’m sure you have a secret for keeping your starter alive AND not having to throw away enormous quantities of flour and water, don’t you?

This was very exciting to read. I stumbled on this technique long ago, making rolls, and have always found they succeed when I follow it, and not otherwise. I thought it was because my machine could not develop the gluten with all the flour in at once, but now I read your explanation, it makes a lot of sense. But, I will let you “nerds”(in the nicest possible way) work on the science, while I continue with the art. And now that I have read this, I will take the technique to my sourdough and artisan breads.

unfortunately, I decided to improvise on a “steam oven” like you have, and used a large stainless steel bowl inverted on the loaf, which, when I tried to remove 15 minutes later fell right on the side of the loaf, resulting in a lopsided boule. This is soooo typical of me… (no, not the first time I manage to do it)

apart from that, I loved the method and had no problems – the bread tastes great, and sings a lot while it’s cooling

I will post a link to the photos, but if you don’t think it is appropriate to post a link here, remove my post and I will stick to text only from now on.

Flo, I wish I had some arcane secret to relate to you concerning how I keep my starter. I do discard some mature starter at every feeding cycle, but I don’t consider it waste. Some people have dogs or cats as pets and feed them larger quantities of far more expensive food than I feed my starter ‘pet’.
I feed my starter every 12 hours. When it’s time to feed, I whisk 15 g of mature starter into 50 g of water. I then add 50 g of flour and mix until a light batter is formed. This refreshed starter is kept at 70ºF (I use my proof box for this) for 12 hours until the next feeding.

Sheila, it’s nice to know that others, besides myself, have found some value in using this technique.

Sally, I’m glad you were happy using the technique. I’ve found that it works quite well for a range of dough hydrations. A post using the technique for making ciabatta will be up shortly.

Steve, Thank you for your “recipe” for keeping an out-of-the-fridge starter alive. I confirm feeding a pet (we own a large Labrador dog) is considerably more expensive…! Your method does’nt require large amounts of flour and water, I might try it. Do you think I could use an organic but cheaper (than the one I use for my doughs) flour to nourrish my starter, would that make a noticeable difference?

Flo, I’ve been using an organic flour to feed my starter (King Arthur Organic Select Artisan Flour), so it should work well for you. I don’t think that a starter’s activity would be affected to any great extent by the use of organic vs. non-organic flour.

Dear Steve,
I don’t have a blog, am just a reader of your yours and others’. This is not a question pertaining to mixing, i apologise. But something you said abt activity increasing twofold for every 10C rise intrigued me. You see, I cant seem to get my sourdough breads off the ground, and I’m wondering if temperature isn’t the problem. The dough is always very wet and unshapeable even after the second proof. It’s bubbly all right and rises, but there is absolutely no structure. It’s strictly with sourdough breads that i have a problem; non-sourdough ones are fine. Is 29 celsius too warm a temperature to be refreshing leaven? I do a 1:1:1 or 1 (leaven):2:2 ratio, should i increase the qty of flour and water as the leaven seems to be very active? And is the very high temperature why my final dough always seem to turn into something resembling almost a leaven in itself? How do people bake in summer???

Michaela, it’s been my experience that if a starter is maintained at too high a temperature, the activity of the proteases (protein cleaving enzymes) present can increase substantially. This can lead to a destruction of the gluten matrix in your dough resulting in some of the effects you describe. Temperatures around 29ºC (84ºF) are probably a bit on the high side. Try maintaining your starter at around 21ºC (70ºF) in between feedings and experiment to determine how much starter you need to use during a feeding cycle at this temperature to get to maturity in 12 hours. This will be determined by the activity of your starter.
During the hot summers here in New England, I keep my starter in the basement, below ground level, where it is nice and cool. Perhaps you have access to a cooler spot in your home as well.

Unfortunately, no. It’s that hot, or even hotter still, year round and there are no cool spots! But nothing like a scientific explanation to confirm my doubts. I very much suspected it was the temperature. Especially since it works when i incorporate the leaven into a starter that’s refrigerated overnight, so it’s more ‘stable’, or if I refrigerate the final dough over one or two nights and add copious amounts of flour, but which comprises the taste and texture. I wonder if i manage to maintain the starter at an optimum temperature, I must also do the same for the dough, or would it be ok if i let it proof at the usual temp., with shorter proofing times (but which also affects the taste and texture…).

Thanks very much for replying! In the meantime, i will look on with envy while you people bake away happily.

Re mixing, there is such a variety of methods. Have you ever tried Dan Lepard’s very gentle and frequent hand-kneading method? I also use the swing-and-slap dough-on-counter method you mention, but I presume it wouldnt work on all types of dough, or does it?

Michaela, I’ve never tried Lepard’s hand mixing method. I’ll have to give it a go some day. The method I use works best for medium to high hydration doughs. It might become problematic for low hydration doughs, where conventional ‘push with the heel of your hand’ kneading might be required.

Chris, I’ve had my brotformen for a number of years. They came from a German manufacturer which, unfortunately, no longer sells to retail customers. The brotformen found here should perform equally as well.

I’ve been making plain old white bread for decades but I’d love to start making artisan breads. Can you tell me why you are giving measurements in weights rather than volume? I know it has to do with moisture, etc., however, it is impractical for me. Also, I just stumbled across your site tonight. Do you have a recipe posted for a starter sponge? I have been struggling for years and years trying to recreate a pizza dough that has the big open air pockets.

Coleen, I measure my ingredients by weight rather than volume and encourage all bakers to do so. Volume measurements are notoriously imprecise. The quantity of flour in one person’s ‘cup’ of flour can be quite different than that in another person’s ‘cup’ of flour, since it depends upon the density of the flour being measured.
Regarding the starter sponge, if you are referring to a natural starter, directions can be found here.

Hi Steve,
I recently discovered your blog, very helpful! I also had the problem of the not-so-successful kneading with my stand mixer, I´ve tried your technique (the bread is cooling on a rack right now!) and it works beautifully! I’ve opened up one of the loafs and it does show a difference. Thank you so much, you don’t know how grateful I am.

By the way, I’m also a chemist, but I’ve never had a very scientific approach to things… maybe that’s why I have a very different job now.

I read on how you keep up your starter and would like to do the same, i.e. using smaller quantities of flower than the KA suggested method. (using KA way, i.e. 1 cup of flower and 1/2 cup of water throws too much away if I want to keep it active without going to the refrigerator). However, how do you build it to the capacity for the Pain au Levain which you call for 300 gr of starter? Great picture of the finished bread!

Highheat, as long as you keep the same feeding ratio, by weight, of starter:water:flour, you can build up as much mature starter as you wish. For example, in my post on Starting a Starter, I describe feeding a 50% hydration starter at a ratio of 1:1:2 of starter:water:flour. For a 100% hydration starter, that ratio would be 1:2:2 of starter:water:flour. If I wanted 300 g of a 100% hydration starter, I would use 60 g of starter:120 g water:120 g flour (1:2:2 ratio). In actuality, I would increase the quantities slightly, while still maintaining the same ratio, in order to have enough starter left over from bread making to continue propagating the starter.

Thanks for the prompt answer. What also I seem to get hung up on is after feeding/building the starter (stay with your 300+gr 100%d starter). Usually, I wait four to six hours before using just fed starter waiting for those bubbles you see in your picture. Your comment and recommendation would be welcomed.

Thanks for the direction and good information. Now, all I have to do is try to make a NY Times recipe POT bread using this starter. I have made the pot bread using yeast and it always turns out great (big holes and delicious crust). However, in substituting starter for the yeast I end up with poor rise. Maybe, in a future blog we can discuss further.
thanks
PS. I have had success with the starter in more traditional recipes and will let you know how the Pain au Levain comes out

Steve,
Pain au Levain using Double Flour Addition – how did mine come out?
EXCELLENT. Using your method, and measurements I made one batch that created two loafs of bread that both had risen well and had the big holes that one associates with professional bakers. I formed one in a round banneton and the other in a long rectangle one. The texture, and taste, differed between the two (now they are from the same dough and both went into the oven together). The round one had more crumb, soft and “Italian” bread style. The long one had more crisp crust and firmer crumb. I am sure the information you provided on keeping and building the starter added greatly to this success.
Thanks

Thanksss…I got the answer to my questions in your post…I am an apprentice baker and all my breads taste good but, they are too dense. I was wondering myself how to get this big holes….and I will try your technique right now…

As an owner of an SP5 spiral kneader for several years, I would like to share some insights into its’ uses and capabilities. I use it exclusively for straight doughs (no sponges), and the spiral action is capapable of taking the gluten structure to peak development, something that no planetary stand mixer can do. The relative motion of planetary mixers and spiral mixers are the same, with some important distinctions:
1) Spiral mixers have flat bottom bowls with straight sides, while the bowls on planertaries are deeper and usually have round bottoms.
2) The spiral mixer bowl rotates, giving the same relative motion as a planetary.
3) The spiral mixer hook travels much closer to bowl, and the postion of the hook gives it a much larger effective “orbit” than a stand mixer.

Using an OP7200 embedded controller and user interface from Rabbit Semiconductor, I constructed my version of a “mixatron” which plots a curve of the average power consumed by a mixer. The SP5 always shows a clear peak, while planetary mixer power peaks quickly then slowly decays. At no time has any dough mixed in my SP5 shown any signs of over-oxidation. It is possible to create an overoxidized dough through the use of oxidizing chemicals, which are commonly used in the bakery industry. Some of these additives are:
1) Potassium Bromate
2) Azodicarbonamide (ADA)
3) Ascorbic Acid
4) Potassium Iodate
5) Calcium Bromate
6) Calcium Iodate
7) Calcium Peroxide
Depending on the mixing method used, high levels of oxidants are sometimes used to acheive proper oxidation.
Without chemical oxidants, over-oxidation through mixing is highly unlikely. Rather, over-mixing leads to breakdown of the gluten, ruining the dough.

s., the double flour addition technique can certainly be used to produce a properly developed dough with all kinds of breads, including tight crumb breads such as pain de mie (sandwich bread). Remember that mixing technique is only one factor among others (e.g., hydration, dough strength, dough handling, etc.) that will the determine the degree of openness of a bread’s crumb.

Dear Steve,
I’m hoping you can help me solve my sourdough conundrum. Having received a starter from a friend on Friday and fed it myself for three days twice a day I made bread today following your recipe above. I’m not a fan of rye so I used 750g of white spelt flour and the other weights as you specify. The resulting dough was quite wet – too wet to mix using the fold and beat method. I thought this might resolve itself so persevered but the final boulot when turned onto the tray for baking turned into a pizza shape! Where am I going wrong? Should the flour amount be increased for white spelt?
Many thanks for any suggestions.

PatchofPeace,
Different flours have different water absorption characteristics. If you are going to change flours, then you need to change the amount of water you are adding during mixing to obtain a dough with the desired characteristics. The goal here would be to add enough water to obtain a moderately loose dough.

[...] mixeur, fouettez 3/4 de la farine avec les 500g d’eau pendant une minute (basé sur le méthode de Steve de Breadcetera) In the bowl of mixer, whip three quarters of the flour with all the water for about a minute [...]

Hello SteveB, Re: ‘Musings on Mixing’
I found your website through a link on thefreshloaf.com. Thanks for all of your research which benefits the baking community!
I wanted to please ask you a question regarding Mr. Bertinet’s hand working technique for dough. Do you detect any sign given by the dough (apart from performing a windowpane test) that might indicate that enough gluten has been developed?
I ask because twice recently when working the dough (wet doughs, 80%+ hydration), all of a sudden the dough loses structure, puddles on the work surface, and becomes bad-sticky as the dough releases water. There isn’t any warning this is going to happen. I hope this has never happened to you but was wondering what thoughts you might have on this issue.
Thanks from breadsong

Hi Breadsong,
I’ve found that the windowpane test is an extremely valuable for determining the extent to which gluten has been developed in a dough. That is not to say that all doughs should be mixed to a fine, translucent windowpane stage. The degree to which dough should be developed, and thus how near to a translucent windowpane the dough should be taken, is determined by a number of factors including the amount of yeast being used, the hydration of the dough, the first fermentation time, etc.

When hand-mixing, it is extremely difficult to over-mix a dough to the point where the gluten begins to break down. I suspect that your difficulty might be related to some other factor. For doughs in the 80%+ hydration range, I would suggest using the double hydration technique. Using this technique, the dough is first mixed with only enough water to give around a 65% hydration dough. Once the gluten is developed to the desired level, enough additional water is then added to bring the dough up to your desired hydration and mixing is continued until all the additional water is absorbed. The technique of double hydration is discussed here.

Hi Steve, Thanks so much for your reply. I’d actually already started a poolish so I could try your double-double method for Ciabatta, when I wrote earlier. Here’s how it turned out:http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20053/ciabatta-steveb039s-formula-amp-technique-breadcetera
I was wondering if you were willing to post pictures of your emulsion, and dough at the different stages of mixing; I’m curious to see if what I’m seeing in the bowl is the same result as what you’re getting, in terms of aeration.
Thanks again, from breadsong

Hi Breadsong,
Since I’m currently playing around with whole grain flours and having fun with some new bread challenges, I haven’t baked a ciabatta in quite some time. The next time I do, I’ll try to post some photos.

I have one suggestion that relies on a technique I have used repeatedly: the whole wheat flour will contribute slightly less bitterness to the final dough and resulting loaves if part of the water for the final dough is used the day before to mix with the whole wheat flour and allowed to rest overnight. This triggers enzymatic action (in fact, in some cases I find the whole wheat flour-water mixture to have puffed up overnight as if it had been yeasted) and reduces whole wheat bitterness. This approach is especially advantageous if the goal is a, say, 50% whole wheat flour loaf. I got this technique from one of the volumes of Best Recipes from America’s Test Kitchens.

Thank you for your suggestion. I was wondering if you could elaborate further on the specific bitterness-reducing enzymes that are activated during the resting period and the substrates they are acting upon.

Whole grain, such as whole wheat, flours contain phytin whose constituent parts are primarily magnesium, phosphoric acid, and calcium. Phytin is essentially unassimilable, that is, the desirable components are nutrionally unavailable without enzymatic action. Although that action can take place to a significant extent when the flour is part of a risen dough, much more conversion of phytin to assimilable nutrients occurs if the whole grain flour is wetted and allowed to sit for several hours prior to incorporation into the subsequent dough. This was shown initially by animal experiments testing animal ingestion and utilitization of whole grains with or without prior soaking. It was shown that equivalent amounts of grains were more nutritious if the grain, such as barley, were soaked for several hours prior to being introduced as part of animal feed (e.g., for cattle). Soaking whole grain flour releases phytase (phosphatase), the enzyme that breaks up phytin so that phosphates can easily combine with calcium. In the process, bitter oils associated with bran and wheat germ are also dissipated (by an ornate chemical process that even I don’t understand!) resulting in “sweeter” whole grain flour. (Probably, what occurs is the initial conversion of starches to simple sugars that proceeds when grains are allowed to continue through soaking to the point of sprouting. The flour, however, can only go so far in this regard since it is ground.) This is especially noticeable when comparing two loaves of mostly whole wheat bread made exactly the same way, but with one utilizing soaked flour and the other performing direct incorporation of the flour into the primary dough. If I remember correctly, without looking, the soaking approach to induce enzymatic action is the keystone to the “Secrets of Perfect Whole Wheat Bread” recipe in the March-April 2011 of Cooks Illustrated (NOT!! The recipe in fact stops at the incorporation of 60% whole wheat flour!).

I baked this recipe yesterday and it came out amazing! I came at this via your ciabatta recipe (double flour/double hydration). Both were a big improvement for me!

One question that occurred to me was what would happen if I tried this recipe in my mixer up until after the autolyse. Then I would hand mix. So, in other words, I would aerate and do the initial mix with my Kitchen Aide and then finish by hand. I am wondering because my mixer seemed to strain a little with this dough vs the ciabatta. If you had any comments, I’d be curious. Otherwise I might just try that.

In any case, this was the best Pain au Levain I ever made! So, many thanks!

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